Mister Silento's Assortment of Etcetera

Thaikwoncorgi

2011-12-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

BKs and Frank the dinosaur

2010-05-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

I apologize that I have not been posting very much lately. Check out this kick-ass dancing dinosaur!

I've doing my homework for finals week to the new Black Keys Album. They are quite "bluesey". Enjoy. =)

Brothers

Viktor Frankl- Clip

2010-05-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

In my first ethics class at the community college level we had three different books to read. Rachel's "Elements of Moral Philosophy," Jack London's "Sea Wolf," and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." The last book left the greatest impression on me. Why is it that some people can endure horror while others collapse under too much stress? Here is a sort clip from a man who endured the holocaust. My step father told me stories of how his troop liberated a Concentration Camp to see women reduced to bones... (Yet still alive!)

Beagle Pup vs Rottweiler

2010-05-06T16:29:00.001-07:00

Beagle Puppy Attacks Rottweiler - watch more funny videos

Nutrition and exercise

2010-05-04T00:40:00.000-07:00

...haven't been extremely high on my priority list lately. It's either been school, work, coping, or laying around in bed mostly. Oddly enough, that is much better than a few months ago. I'm still trying to work on my self image. There are many nights where it feels easier to order a pizza or get a candy bar to deal with all the stress and frustration that has been going on. I want to make a change before my body gets too wasted. It hit me like a ton of bricks to learn that my BMI is in the obese category. You can calculate yours by converting your weight to kg and dividing it by your height in meters squared. 25-30 is overweight. Over 30 is obese. Many of the leisurely activities that have been fun in the past aren't doing much for me now, like reading or playing video games. Changing eating habits and exercising more are obviously the key ingredients to making things better, but it seems like my depression gets in the way.

Over the break I purchased a couple Frisbees and a hacky sack. Used them about four times since Spring quarter began. Most people don't seem to be that interested in hanging out with me lately. I guess I can't blame them, I've been doing a lot of things I'm not all that proud of... There have been a couple of days where all I eat are cookies and junk food.

Maybe I can find a way to get the bike fixed up so I ride it over the summer. If that doesn't work I'll try to start jogging again. Hell, I will start tomorrow. It doesn't do any good to wait for others to come and make things better for you. I'm learning how to be more self-motivated.

Lightbulbs and bluerooms?

2010-04-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Jonah Lehrer's blog: the frontal cortex. I wonder what color/symbol is associated with a lack of learning? Mud brown and grey zombies?

Light Bulbs

Posted on: April 7, 2010 5:24 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

There's a neat list of variables that reliably (at least reliably in the lab) increase certain forms of creativity. There is, for instance, the blue room effect, and the benefit of spatial distance, and the bonus of living abroad, and the perk of thinking like a 7-year old. Here's a new creative strategy:

Previous research has characterized insight as the product of internal processes, and has thus investigated the cognitive and motivational processes that immediately precede it. In this research, however, we investigate whether insight can be catalyzed by a cultural artifact, an external object imbued with learned meaning. Specifically, we exposed participants to an illuminating lightbulb - an iconic image of insight - prior to or during insight problem-solving. Across four studies, exposing participants to an illuminating lightbulb primed concepts associated with achieving an insight, and enhanced insight problem-solving in three different domains (spatial, verbal, and mathematical), but did not enhance general (non-insight) problem-solving.

So for those taking notes at home: if your work involves moments of insight, it's probably best to work in a bright blue room, surrounded by pictures of lightbulbs and little kids.

Link of the Day

2010-04-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

It's no suprise that the American penal system is absolutely ridiculous. This post from Dirk Hanson has some interesting points raised by the deputy director of the Office of Drug Control Policy, Thomas McLellan. His schtick has been to lesson the stigma associated with drug addiction and find methods for earlier identification & treatment. Check out the blog. Good stuff. I'm going to sleep now.

addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com

Corgi Time!

2010-03-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

The search for little Albert

2010-03-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating investigative bio about the famous boy who was trained to fear little white bunnies and mice. Albert B's case highlights some ethical concerns with experimentation on human behavior.

If you haven't heard of behaviorist John B. Watson's study, please watch this short video first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt0ucxOrPQE

NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness | Health Reform

2010-03-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness | Health Reform

Personality Theory

2010-03-14T22:15:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php

Eysenck Personality Inventory

2010-03-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here were my results. If you are interested you may take one for yourself. My neurotic score may eventually go down through therapy. I haven't always suffered from panic attacks.

Eysenck's Test Results

Extraversion (57%) moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.
Neuroticism (67%) moderately high which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Psychoticism (51%) medium medium which suggests you are moderately self interested, willful, and difficult, while still respecting the well being of others.

Take Eysenck Personality Test (similar to EPQ-R)
personality tests by similarminds.com

Eysenck actually used Galen's four humors to map out his personality inventory.

This test seemed a bit shallow compared to the Big Five. This weekend I plan on reviewing another personality test along with my new online obsession.

Personal note

2010-03-09T23:43:00.000-08:00

The weekend was nice. I went to the new Tim Burton feature, "Alice in Wonderland." My two favorites were Absolem, the cynical hookah smoking caterpillar voiced by Alan Rickman and the bloodhound named Bayard Hamar.

My quest for mindful eating has been only going so-so since it is hell week at Eastern. Fortunately, I have some yummy chicken waiting at home for me as soon as I finish studying for my upcoming tests tonight. It'll be a chance to savour each bite. =)

And then there is Lost. Oh boy. I'll spare everyone any whacky or kneejerk theories. Okay, nevermind... just go visit my group on facebook. Seriously, this is a chance for make up for the bad asian stereotype...

Dogen < Compsognathus

Nietzsche's Madness

2010-03-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

From "Beyond Good and Evil" Chapter 2, The Free Spirit:

44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, VERY free spirits, these philosophers of the future—as certainly also they will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under OBLIGATION almost as much to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the conception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt—not to mention that in respect to the NEW philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly named "free spirits"—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"—and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be DONE AWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that for this end the dangerousness of his situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to the unconditioned Will to Power—we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,—that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite—we do not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the OTHER extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHERE perhaps it will then be driven? And as to the import of the dangerous formula, "Beyond Good and Evil," with which we at least avoid confusion, we ARE something else than "libres-penseurs," "liben pensatori" "free-thinkers," and whatever these honest advocates of "modern ideas" like to call themselves. Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude—such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers?

His rhetoric is quite powerful and dizzying to go over. At first glance, I take him to be arguing for a domineering, resilient, and adventurous personality. This could be a swallow interpretation... yet most of my readings have seemed to support this caricature of his philosophy. One can only wonder how he might react to the contemporary notion of free spirit.

An ulcer or burning headache appear to be items that Nietzsche thought the better philosopher should embrace. Is there such a thing as useless suffering for such a human? It makes me giggle to dream up absurd scenarios where Nietzsche would be your doctor I’ve always wondered if there could be a biological basis for Nietzschean peevishness.

Most people are familiar with fact that this philologist, a precursor the modern linguist, suffered from some slow brain deterioration. He had unfortunate coprophagic habits and suffered a mental collapse on January, 3 1889 after seeing a horse whipped. One study I have come across argues that this couldn't have been from syphilis since he lacked some neurological features associated with this illness. Instead, it may be more likely that he suffered from frontotemporal dementia or possibly CASASIL. It is worth taking a look at if you have any interest in medicine or neuroscience.

I also found one of the “madness letters” he sent around the time of his breakdown. It is quite bizarre.

Turin, Beginning January, 1889: Letter to August Strindberg

Herr Strindberg

Eheu [Alas]? ... not Divorçons [divorced] after all? ...

The Crucified

Nietzsche/Strindberg Correspondence Selections

Strindberg’s reply to Nietzsche’s 11-27-1888 letter

Holte, Beginning December, 1888: Letter to Friedrich Nietzsche in Turin

Without a doubt, you have given mankind the deepest book1 that it possesses, and not the least is that you have the courage, maybe also the necessity, to spew these magnificent words in the faces of this riff-raft—. I thank you for that! ... I end all my letters to my friends: Read Nietzsche! That is my Carthago est delenda!2 At any rate your greatness, from the moment that you are known and understood, will be degraded, and the sweet rabble will start to address you as familiarly as one of themselves. It is better that you protect your noble solitude and 10,000 feet higher than we others, make a secret pilgrimage to your sanctuary, in order once there, to create to your heart’s content. Let us guard the esoteric teaching, in order to preserve you clean and untouched, leaving you not without the mediation of devoted followers in general.

I sign myself, August Strindberg.

Having read Strindberg’s play The Father and his short novella Utopia in Reality: A Novelle of Peace (Die Utopie in der Wirklichkeit: Eine Friedensnovelle), Nietzsche wrote to Strindberg:

Turin, December 31, 1888

To August Strindberg in Holte

Dear Sir,

You shall soon hear my response to your novella—it will sound like a rifle shot. I have convoked a conference of princes in Rome, I intend to have the young Kaiser face a firing squad.

Auf Wiedersehen! For we shall meet again. Une seule condition: Divorçons ...

Nietzsche Caesar

Strindberg’s 12-31-1888 reply in Latin:

Holtibus pridie cal. Jan. MDCCCLXXXIX

Carissime Doctor!

Jelw, Jelw manhnai!

Litteras tuas non sine perturbatione accepi et tibi gratias ago.

Rectus vives, Licini, neque altum

Semper urgendo, neque dum procellas

Cautus horrescis nimium premendo

Litus iniquum.

Interdum juvat insanire!

Vale et Fave!

Strindberg (Deus, optimus maximus).

English Translation:

Dearest Doctor!

I want, I want to be mad!

I received your letter not without agitation and I thank you for it.

You'll do better, Licinius, not to spend your life

Venturing too far out on the dangerous waters,

Or else, for fear of storms, staying too close in

To the dangerous rocky shoreline3.

Meanwhile it is a joy to be mad!

Farewell and remain well disposed to me!

Strindberg (the best, the highest God).

________________________________________

1 On the Genealogy of Morals

2 Roman senator Cato’s cry of the Third Punic War (Rome vs. Cathage): “Carthage must be destroyed!”

3 From Horace: Odes II, 10